Q: Brother, thank you so much for that presentation. I, I like jazz very much. Especially, um, bebop, uh, from a certain time in the U.S. And I’ve always had a feeling that, um, it is, um, it was a modality, um, of revolution, also. Also I know that there was narratives that bebop was also considered not really real music at some point in time and that it was also considered too far from classical music. So to connect to that discussion, the point you were making earlier about opera, for example, and kind of how, uh, maybe in structures and institutions even such as through music, like opera, uh, could be oppressive. I just wanted to know from your point of view what’s your take on bebop and to what extent did also try to reclaim or claim other parts or other nuances of music and sound beyond classic as the standard, or the norm.

A: Well, I mean…um…I-I-I love bebop. Um, but, but for me at least I think that the, the historical development of the music that is called jazz of which the emergence of which bebop is part—that development—it’s an interesting phenomena. It’s something I try to talk about with my students, um, and it’s hard to explain. It’s hard to—at least my—what I’m saying is, the way I think about this is hard to explain and its probably because my thinking isn’t so clear. Langston Hughes, famously—uh, the great African American poet, Langston Hughes famously described bebop as—the name bebop comes from the sound of a cop hitting a guy upside the head. Right? And that gives you a very specific kind of sense of the music when you are listening to Max Roach or Art Blakey or Kenny Clark playing the drums, and you, and every time you hear that-that drum—the drum beat, you, you, you cutinize it through the scene of police violence. You know, sort of, police anti-black violence. And I-I don’t argue with Langston Hughes on this in any way. Um, there’s a way that, you know, you could say, um, you know, that, the entire history of the development of percussion—at least within the context of, let’s say, what we might call, so called, new world societies—is always a recording of violence, of brutality. There’s this amazingly interesting book. Some people think it’s a very flawed book, and, I’m sure it is, ‘cus what book isn’t? But I learned something from it. You know. It’s a book called, The Half Has Never Been Told, by this historian named Edward Baptist. And one of the things he talks about—the one—the book is organized around a kind of intense sort of analysis of the specific modes of brutality that were visited upon black people in what he calls the second slave era in the United States. Where, what we are describing is a movement from the east coast in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, sort of southern movement but also westward movement to places like Arkansas—where my family comes from—Louisiana, Mississippi, and it’s the movement of enslaved people that um—that occurs in relation to the development of cotton and the cotton economy. And one of the things he does in the book is he describes the increasing brutality visited upon black people as a kind of disintegration of the body. Right? Where people’s, sort of, bodily integrity is so violated that they become seen as hands, or, simply as legs, or simply as feet. Right? And so, he’s describing—and, and, and the way in which that particular thing happens with greatest intensity, is in the very specific techniques of picking cotton, right? That, first of all, black folks are placed under this tremendous, brutal regime of torture, basically, that was designed to increase their productivity. You had to pick more cotton and you had to pick it faster. And in order to pick cotton fast, you had to be able to use both hands and both feet, but independently of one another. You had to be able to step and use your left hand and your right hand while you were picking cotton the whole time. And what it produces is something that we would call, and I talk about it a little bit in this poem, independence of limb. Right? A condition where, in order to pick cotton more quickly, literally, your left hand didn’t—needed not to know what your right hand is doing. Now, the brutal fact of it is, is that, that condition that produces independence of limb in order to maximize the capacity to pick cotton, is also the condition that produces the bebop drummer. Right? So it’s quite literally the way in which, that the, the, the viciousness which has been visited upon black people in the United States manifests itself in the, in, in the very techniques, okay? Of Jazz drumming. And really, the kinds of drumming that we hear in black popular music in general. So, so there’s this very deep way in which that, that viciousness is encoded in every note that’s ever played. You know, I have never been able to listen to James Brown screaming, or, for that matter, John Coltrane screaming, and not hear the screaming of a servant girl as she’s being raped and beaten—I can’t. Now, my pleasure, in that music, is always alloyed, right? By that pain, the music doesn’t ameliorate that pain. It records that pain. Um, at the same time, um, for me at least, the history of the music, the history of the development of the music, is all bound up with people not really giving a fuck what white people think of anything. Now, how does this work? How is it that your music can record the brutality, uh, that has been visited upon you by white folks, while at the same time being the expression of not giving a shit what they think. Now, that’s a mystery, but—which I’m, you know, attempting to investigate. But one of the ways in which ways that manifests itself, for me, is at least, I don’t think that when Kenny Clark and Monk and Charlie Christian and Max Roach and them were hanging out in Minton’s Playhouse in 1942 in Harlem, engaged in the collective research that now we come to know as bebop—they just weren’t thinking about white folks at that point. You know? And I don’t think that they were thinking of what they were doing as either—not only not a critique but even a response to opera, you know? Bird loved opera. He liked music. He liked sound. Right? He was interested in it in however it manifested itself. There’s this great story in Miles Davis’ autobiography when he talks about hanging out with Freddy Webster and they would be high and they would be listening to doorknobs—to doors—creak trying to figure out what key it was in. And he says—At one point he says, “We were scientists of sound.” What they were against was the exclusion of sound from music. They were against the regulatory exclusion of sound from music. They were against that whole history of violent regulation and the imposition of musical sovereignty that Professor Vieira Nery was talking about that he traces back to the 8th century in the court of Charlemagne and the ways in which they lied and said what the Greeks were doing. Right? So what he was against was the history of the European exclusion of sonic difference. Okay? Which was manifest first and foremost on European peoples. And, which is to say, that the manifestation of those exclusionary, of that exclusionary regulatory work on European peoples almost necessitated the greater intensity with which that brutality was visited upon us. Okay? So my whole thing, is like, the short answer to the question is: I taught a class on opera, ‘cus I like music, I like sound, and I so don’t give a fuck about white people think about the sounds I like, that it means I can even like opera if I want to. Um, but I can like opera while at the same time studying a history of brutality that manifests itself in opera, in ways that are actually kind of coming to sharper relief than the way that history of brutality manifests itself in bebop, or in hip hop. So, because, I don’t care what they think, and because I want to, one of my favorite poets, Ed Ro—because “I want to see the earth before the end of the world”, I feel like I gotta try to see if I can pay attention to everything. And, you know. But that’s just me, so.